


The Friend Nobody Likes

by orphan_account



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Friendship, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>//She can feel his ugly, crooked grin aimed at the back of her head, and remembers that he knows exactly how frightened she is right now. Because he is the Nightmare King. Because he can taste her fear on the air. Because she's in a cage, and he is not.</p><p>"Come now, my dear. You can tell old Pitch all about--"</p><p>"Look, Pitch, I'm not going to sing and dance for your entertainment just because I'm in here," she snaps, flustered and upset. "If it's all the same to you, I'll keep the few shreds of dignity I have left."</p><p>Pitch reappears smoothly in her field of vision, as if floating across the floor more than walking. He folds his hands elegantly behind his back, smiling down at her like a cat at a helpless canary -- a cat with thumbs, a working knowledge of cage locks, and a mean streak impressive even by the high standards of feline-kind. "Of course, Toothiana. And that's exactly why I'm here."//</p><p>[Written for a prompt on KM: The five times Pitch protected the Guardians, and the one time they all worked to save Pitch.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Friend Nobody Likes

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna try to name the various segments after song titles/lyrics, so points to anyone who can name them all.
> 
> Rated for the occasional scary things that come with Pitchface.
> 
> Also, help me, I can't stop writing RotG fanfic.

**I. "Ladies And Gentlemen!"**

 

"Chirp!" Thunk. " _Chirp!_ " THUNK.

"Sweetie, I really appreciate your dedication, but you're giving mommy a headache," Tooth says as sweetly as possible through the strain evident in her tone, one hand to her temple massaging carefully between feathers. Baby Tooth chirrups an apology, settling somewhat indignantly on the little wooden perch provided for her inside her gilded cage. Or, _ostensibly_ gilded. She regards the spots where the golden spray-paint has flecked off to reveal the truth of the slightly rusted steel wires, and turns her long nose up disdainfully.

So far the rust has proven to be less of a liability to the cage's integrity than Baby Tooth had hoped, but that's not for want of ardent testing on her part.

Tooth inspects the thicker bars of her own cage. They too have been colored gold, but her captor ran out of spray paint partway through the process, and now mismatched silken sheets in tacky floral patterns have been draped about to cover the brushed steel surfaces that were left bare. She fingers a frayed bit of fabric near a set of gold-colored aluminum rings sewn along one edge and suspects that the ever-so luxurious drapery started life as someone's mother's living room curtains.

She sighs heavily, and Baby Tooth chirps with concern at her demeanor. "Oh, no, honey, I'm not scared," she begins, then falters. Well, she hates to worry her miniature clone, but she hates to lie even more. "Okay, maybe I'm a _little_ scared, but to be honest I'm mostly embarrassed. I've got to admit, I definitely underestimated the stopping power of illegal tazers, but I... caaa-aan't quite decide which is more pressing: that the others come and save us, or that they never find out this even happened. _Ever._ "

Tooth pouts a little in Baby Tooth's direction. "Jack will never let me hear the end of it." At the indignant chirp she receives, she puts her hands up placatingly. "Oh, I'm sure he'd never do anything to hurt my feelings, but really, the _mileage_ that _darling_ little hellion will get out of knowing that the Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies was captured by--"

She pauses with an exasperated sigh as the cellar door swings open, and in saunters her captor. His jaunty red three-piece suit -- tailcoat and all -- is frayed, patched, and holey, and smells strongly enough of mothballs that it could knock Tooth off her feet from ten paces were she not already sitting. It looks distinctly dusty and ill-fitted as if he's been saving it for a special occasion, but had it tailored several years and a great many super-sized Big Mac meals ago. It's an improvement over the grubby t-shirt that failed to cover his hairy, protruding belly and lint-encrusted navel yesterday; the battered stovepipe hat covering his bald pate, unfortunately, is not. The long, greasy brown locks fringing his round head like a curtain (perhaps a more dignified curtain than the paisley one under Tooth's daintily crossed ankles, and that's _saying_ something) have been pulled back into what he must consider a dashing sort of pony tail.

"... well, _him_ ," Tooth finishes pointedly, eyeing the man called Bobby as he approaches her cage with what is probably intended to be a swagger but winds up as more of a waddle.

"How are we feeling today, my sweet?" Urgh, and then there's the way he talks. No, _everything_ about his mouth; his snaggled, too-large yellow teeth are all but polka-dotted with cavities in a way that's like nails on a chalkboard to Toothiana, and almost has her missing Pitch. _Almost._ And just as bad is that severe lateral lisp, dragging the word 'sweet' through the muck and transmogrifying it into something more like 'shchweet' with a heavy dose of saliva gurgling on the back of his tongue. He reminds her of nothing so much as a death metal bassist character from that awful adult cartoon Jamie watches at nights when his mom is asleep.

He's even got an appropriately horrendous mustache.

"A little claustrophobic," she answers in a tenuously demure tone, though her expression tells a different story. Rather, it tells of a promise that involves eight dollars in quarters in his pocket, but he certainly won't enjoy the process of earning those coins.

"Tell you what, sweet cheeks," Bobby begins, ignoring the disgusted face she offers at the endearment, "today being opening day, you preen real pretty for the audience, make me some dough, and I'll get you a _real_ gold cage the size of a palace. The size of the _Taj-freaking-Mahal_."

"Honey, the Taj Mahal isn't a palace, it's a mausoleum."

He looks back at her blankly.

"Which is to say it's a _grave,_ dear," she explains patiently, "and if either of us is going into one of _those_ , it certainly won't be me."

Tooth smiles sweetly. To the side of her, in her small cage hung from a post welded to the bars of Tooth's larger one, Baby Tooth punctuates the thinly veiled threat by punching one tiny fist smartly into the opposing palm, her porcelain-doll face set grimly.

The man's raucous laughter is preceded by a long, phlegmy snort that makes both fairies cringe and gag.

"Just like that, baby, _just like that_. You two are gonna make me rich. Rich!" He waddles to a wall of bookshelves stuffed with bones, cheap mummified monkey's paws, and big glass jars preserving questionable things. It seems Bobby's lifelong dream has been to run his own sideshow museum, and he's finally got his main attraction. Using one of the jars as a mirror -- containing what appears to be a fetus in formaldehyde, within glass that still has part of a ripped-off candy label adhered to its side -- he scrubs his index finger over his teeth in lieu of a toothbrush, which fails to improve the state of his dilapidated chompers but does sate Tooth's reluctant curiosity as to how they _got_ so terrible. He smacks his lips and flashes an ugly grin at his prisoners. "There's a crowd waiting to see you already, so make sure you don't disappoint."

With that, he leaves the way he came, and Tooth sags back against the bars behind her, wings carefully folded. Baby Tooth chirrups in annoyance. "Yes, I know. I never thought I'd be so disappointed in someone believing in me." She gets the feeling her captor believes in a great many things, myths and legends that are secretly real -- such as herself -- and even ones that she knows for a fact are not. Of course she's tried explaining to him that only believers can see and hear her and that not every schmuck willing to pay the five-dollar fee to get into Bobby's mother's cellar for a freak show is going to get his money's worth.

And of course he just thought she was trying to trick him.

She's not afraid of being exposed. Rather, she's afraid of never being set free to continue her work. What's the point of all the world's children believing in the Tooth Fairy more than they ever did if she can't collect their teeth, leave them gifts, safeguard their memories?

"Ah, so it's _you_ , my dear Toothiana." The velvet voice slithers up from the dark corners of the room with a low rumbling chuckle, and Tooth's back goes ruler-straight, her head snapping around to look for whom she knows is here. The shadows in the farthest corner distort, shift, and slowly rise up like a huge drop of black ink falling in reverse toward the ceiling. When the writhing mass has reached Pitch's height, it deflates on itself, pulling inward into his slim shape and sharp features. "I smelled the most delicious, exotic little morsel of fear, and I wondered... And, well. Here we are," he finishes as the blackness recedes into his coat and hair, leaving bare his gray face and hands and that long (infuriatingly toned and smooth) strip of chest exposed by his low collar.

"Ah, so it's _you_ , Pitch," she echoes with a bright and cheery smile. "Well, it could be worse. It could be _Jack_ poking fun at my plight. I actually care what Jack thinks."

"Touché, my darling, feathered headache. Had I a heart, you'd have cut right to it," Pitch snickers, slowly circling the cage. Tooth resists the urge to watch his progress, resists the way her feathers want to ruffle when he passes behind her, out of sight; it's too telling of her intimidation. But she can feel his ugly, crooked grin aimed at the back of her head, and remembers that he knows _exactly_ how frightened she is right now. Because he is the Nightmare King. Because he can taste her fear on the air. Because she's in a cage, and he is not. "Tell me, how has the great Warrior Queen of Oversized Mosquitoes sunk so low?"

Tooth pointedly ignores him.

"Come now, my dear. You can tell old Pitch all about--"

"Look, Pitch, I'm not going to sing and dance for your entertainment just because I'm in here," she snaps, flustered and upset. "If it's all the same to you, I'll keep the few shreds of dignity I have left."

Pitch reappears smoothly in her field of vision, as if floating across the floor more than walking. He folds his hands elegantly behind his back, smiling down at her like a cat at a helpless canary -- a cat with thumbs, a working knowledge of cage locks, and a mean streak impressive even by the high standards of feline-kind. "Of course, Toothiana. And that's exactly why I'm here."

She stares unanswering back at him, affecting disinterest.

But Pitch doesn't elaborate, at least not yet. Instead he primly rubs one set of smooth, gleaming nails against the front of his coat and gives them a judicious inspection, and changes the subject to what appears to be another of his smug, dismal monologues. "When their children point in wonder and _insist_ that they see you, corroborating the same exact description of the beautiful fairy in the cage, most -- maybe not all, but _most_ \-- will stop and consider the possibility of the impossible. Children all over the world will believe, and the better part of their parents, too." He tilts his head down, gleaming eyes fixed on her stony face, and gives her a perfectly machiavellian smile. "And I simply can't let you have such a distinct advantage, now can I?"

"So what do you plan to do about it?" she asks, trying to be snide, but her voice wavers somewhere between hope and fear. Hope that maybe, just maybe, he'll help her -- but it's a shivering, weak hope ready to give way beneath her skepticism, her knowledge of just who Pitch is. A hope that's tempered by the fear that he means to kill her here and now when she can't stop him. Baby Tooth does a far less effective job of disguising those emotions, fluttering like a little blue and green cyclone around her cage.

It doesn't escape Pitch's notice, and he smiles all the wider. "They'll be thrilled to see you, you know. And thrill is so often a breath away from fear."

She doesn't know what to make of the cryptic answer, but despite her curiosity she can't countenance stroking his ego by asking for an elaboration. It doesn't matter, because the door behind him opens again, spilling a rectangle of sickly yellow light across the spot he's standing; as it does, he's simply gone, as if his presence has been erased by the light. But the stifling sense of danger weighing down upon the room tells her he's still very much here.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please," comes Bobby's lisping voice, "if you'll step right this way for the wonder, the shock, the _thrill_ of a lifetime--"

Tooth watches helplessly as his feet lurch down the steps, followed by a dozen others, and she moves to obscure herself behind one of the curtains.

"--I give you, the one and only, the Tooth--"

Several things happen at once.

Something black and inky rushes up across the floor, eating up that rectangle of light and slithering under their feet. It shifts, and everyone on the stairs goes tumbling -- luckily a short distance -- to the floor.

The door behind them slams shut with a decisive, echoing _bang_ , earning gasps and shouts from the people left outside and the ones trapped within.

The bookshelf against the wall creaks and rocks, and leans forward. The jars upon it are not dumped on the floor, because before they can slide free they explode all at once, issuing gouts of foul-smelling embalming fluids across the room, followed by a small shower of severed hands, intestines, eyeballs, a dozen species of fetus.

The lifeless odds and ends twitch when black tendrils slither into them, and they begin to move of their own volition toward the crowd.

And there are screams, so many screams, terrified and helpless. No one's looking at Tooth. They're preoccupied with a half-formed infant struggling its way up Bobby's leg as he shrieks, high and long and scared, and adds the acidic tang of his urine to the reaking miasma on the air.

And to the chorus of shrieks, a percussion of banging cabinet doors and rattling chains fills the room in an awful cacaphony.

In short order, they're all scrambling to the door that the others are tugging on from the outside in a desperate attempt to help. For a few horrible seconds the door is held tight, but finally it opens with one abrupt, swift movement.

And then everyone is gone, everyone has left screaming from the room, and Tooth and Baby Tooth are alone in the wreckage.

Finally, _finally_ Tooth finds her voice, clearing her throat delicately to speak to the spirit she knows is still lingering. "Was, um... Was all that really necessary?"

There's another chuckle from everywhere and nowhere at all, and underneath it she almost misses the click of the locks on the cages snapping open.

"Consider their fear as... _payment_ for my services. Take care, dear Tooth."

The feeling of pressure, of a huge unseen hand pushing down on her lungs and heart, finally eases, and she knows Pitch is gone.

Tooth takes a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, and, collecting Baby Tooth carefully, she leaves.


End file.
